Friday, July 22, 2005

This column by Eric Mink (the "conservative" of the St Louis Post-Dispatch according to a P-D employee that called into the O'Reilly Factor) is just reason # 1,426 why you should cancel your subscription to the St Louis Post-Dispatch. (For a state that went solidly to Bush, you'd think that the paper would read much more moderate, but on issue after issue and story after story, you get the same lines and perspectives that you get out of World Workers' Party.

The distortions, half-truths, and bald-faced lies in this piece are amazing. He contradicts facts that were determined by a bi-partisan Senate committee looking into this matter - but that fails to pierce the bubble that Eric Mink lives in.

KARL ROVE: He has betrayed the nationBy Eric Mink Of the Post-Dispatch07/20/2005

It's ironic that political genius Karl Rove - and perhaps others - could end up in prison for exposing the identity of an undercover CIA agent. Ironic, because their essential mistake in doing so was one of identity: their own.

They think they work for President George W. Bush. They don't. They work for America.

There's no reason to believe that Rove gave much thought at all to Valerie Plame Wilson, a 20-year CIA veteran working in the agency's counterproliferation division, when he mentioned her to at least two reporters in July 2003. The only reason she was in his sights was that she was married to Joseph Wilson IV. Wilson, a retired veteran U.S. diplomat, had gone public with disturbing information that the Bush administration might have twisted intelligence information to support its campaign for starting a war with Iraq.

In February 2002, the CIA sent Wilson to the African country of Niger to check out sketchy intelligence information suggesting that Iraq tried to buy Niger uranium for making nuclear weapons. Vice President Dick Cheney had been told about the report earlier and had asked for more information.

Wilson found no evidence of any recent purchases by Iraq and told the CIA so when he returned. His findings were consistent with doubts already held by the State Department's intelligence division.

Nevertheless, the administration's top officials - Cheney, Bush and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice - continued to link Iraq with African uranium right up to the start of war in March 2003.

Wilson finally debunked the claims in a commentary published on the op-ed page of The New York Times on July 6, 2003, forcing the White House to make a rare admission of error the next day. In a statement issued July 11, then-CIA director George Tenet took full responsibility for the mistake. But on July 22, Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley admitted that Tenet had warned him (and Rice and White House speechwriter Michael Gerson) months earlier that the Iraq-Africa-uranium story was questionable.

At that point, the president's credibility on the Iraq war was in serious jeopardy, and the White House was reeling. This was the precise period of time when Rove discussed Wilson's wife's CIA job with Time magazine's Matt Cooper, syndicated columnist Robert Novak and possibly other journalists.

It was classic distraction and misdirection, time-honored tools of stage magicians and political sharpies and honed to a fine art by Rove over many years. Nothing up my sleeve; look here. Shift press attention from the administration's credibility to Wilson's credibility, even though Wilson's published account of his brief mission to Niger was beyond reasonable dispute.[...]E-mail: emink@post-dispatch.com

Read the whole thing if your eyes aren't already bleeding. He ties the SCOTUS nomination to burying Rove in the news cycle and then makes the attempt to bring in Watergate. Amazing... Surprised he hasn't come up with the fact that London's bombing was another "news event" intended to keep our Karl off the front pages. Oh, wait... that's next week's column.